Archive for category: Photos

Home Depot wasteland    (2006.02.23)

I’m not gonna dignify this one by calling it a Homo Depot, as is often done here.

Fieroté    (2006.02.23)

Yes, this is a flat-tired Pontiac Fiero with a pickup-truck cap piled onto its roof.

Arch    (2006.02.23)

My photo of these concrete arches being driven down Bay St. makes me think of May Day parades in which everything under the sun gets driven down the boulevard.

Icebiking in action    (2006.02.19)

Yes, of course I attended the icebike race last night. I coined the word. Why wouldn’t I go?

My first time, curiously enough. It was actually held in a semiconvenient location and, more importantly, inside. The disadvantage? No wolves or coyotes.

Bronze cars look better in the rain    (2006.02.19)

I seem never to have published this photo, despite having it in my completed files:

Hence my hope for a triumphant sequel is somewhat truncated. En tout cas:

Maws    (2006.02.15)

Now you know where they get their fuel. SOYLENT ZAMBONI IS PEOPLE!

I initially missed this shot (and you know how I hate that), but the firefightron, who was, sadly, not Chris the Fireman, obligingly reënacted this news story for me, just like on network television.

British-Israeli Lande Rovère    (2006.02.11)

This THRILL-CAM shot depicts a full-sized Lande Rovère with Ontario and (apparently) British plates (front plate is one row, black type on white) and what I thought were ill-rendered numerals on its spare-tire cover. After I noticed the bumper sticker, I decided I was looking at Hebrew.

The left rear seat (the one behind the steering wheel, another oddity) contained a child restraint; the driver, évidemment, was busy talking on a shoephone.

If I had to drive from Brighton to Toronto I’m not sure I’d start out in Tel Aviv, but that’s just me, innit?

The Tin Man’s Nº 1    (2006.02.08)

Javanrouhism as genre    (2006.02.02)

Everyone’s favourite even-keeled, superhirsute Iranian-Canadian photobloggeur, Sam Javanrouh (q.v.), addressed a capacity crowd at Hart House last night. He walked us through various of his photos and slideshows and demonstrated, in a just-barely-comprehensible fashion, what he does in Photoshop to turn sow’s ears into purses. Sam also recapitulated a Spacer-style autobiography by telling us he hated Toronto when he moved here. I guess that problem’s been solved.

And this is what he looked like.

Actually, I walked smartly up to the podium the minute Q&A ended, surprising the much-beloved émigré in the process. I all but forced the man with the notoriously thick lens to stand between the nearby denuded easels for another back-on shot, which I described as “schtick by now.” Sam gamely complied, if with some almost-fully-concealed bewilderment and annoyance.

He claims to be shy, but this is clearly situational, as he has no trouble addressing a crowd. Mostly he claims to be shy to ask his infrequent human subjects for permission to be photographed. Often he compensates by publishing photos in which people are unidentifiable.

But look at the shot James Tilberg got. There seems to be a trend of shooting the shooter from behind even as that same shooter also tries to shoot human subjects in an unidentifiable way. If splorpist photographs are ambiguous, seemingly timeless street photos à la Splorp.com, are javanrouhist photographs carefully composed so that no faces are visible?

Well, I think they are, but then again my nonce words scarcely ever catch on (save for standardista).